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by HenryMercury



Series: Henry's Cursed Killing Eve Week 2021 Collection [4]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Domestic, Attempted Murder, Cursed Content Rating: Medium, F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 02:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30115638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: “We wanted a place to hide from the Twelve,” she says, very reasonably, because one of them has to be sensible and, despite what Eve may think, Villanelle takes her turn often enough. “And if there is a Twelve in this version of reality, it seems like they don’t know about us. Because we’re—”“—an interior designer and a Psychology professor.”“Who are married,” Villanelle adds delightedly.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Series: Henry's Cursed Killing Eve Week 2021 Collection [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2211225
Comments: 11
Kudos: 45
Collections: Killing Eve Week 2021





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**Author's Note:**

> Another day, another prompt wilfully misconstrued. 
> 
> Day 4 = Alternate Universe

“This isn’t a real thing.”

“Eve,” Villanelle says patiently, “it is real. We are here, in an alternate universe. In the guest room of our alternate selves.”

Eve keeps shaking her head so vehemently a loose curl flies into Villanelle’s face where it rests on the edge of her pillow.

“Or,” Eve says, “we’ve been caught and drugged into some sort of hallucination—that would make more sense, actually—”

Villanelle has to admit that it probably would. This does not change the truth, however.

“We wanted a place to hide from the Twelve,” she says, very reasonably, because _one_ of them has to be sensible and, despite what Eve may think, Villanelle takes her turn often enough. “And if there is a Twelve in this version of reality, it seems like they don’t know about us. Because we’re—”

“—an interior designer and a Psychology professor.”

“Who are _married_ ,” Villanelle adds delightedly.

After they showed up on the doorstep of Eve ex-Polastri and Oksana never-Villanelle and got the expected introductions out of the way, Villanelle had gone straight for the wedding album. She’s always liked the idea of marriage; the theatre of the big day, the lavishness, the attention. The idea of someone wanting to keep her purely out of love.

Other-them’s wedding was a beautiful day. Even the Eves had joined them in flipping through the scrapbooks, after the obligatory eye-rolls had been completed.

Marrying Maria was nice, but not nearly as nice as marrying Eve would be.

“It’s certainly weird to see,” says Eve. “I wouldn’t have thought either of us were cut out for it.”

That stings a little. Villanelle turns onto her back, staring up at the ceiling instead of at Eve. The ceilings are nice. High. Intricately corniced.

“It is funny that we found each other even without any murders.”

“It’s suspicious, is what it is.”

“I think it’s nice.”

“It’s unrealistic.”

Villanelle sighs. “It can be both, can’t it, Eve?”

Alternate Eve is much like Villanelle’s Eve, albeit better dressed. She must be getting help from her Oksana, Villanelle reasons; the tweed-jacket-brogues-and-thick-framed-glasses _professor aesthetic_ is just a little too shabby-chic. The sizeable brilliant-cut gray-green diamond on her left hand is no accident either.

“Go easy on her,” alt-Eve tells Villanelle while they sit on the porch drinking; hot chocolate for Villanelle, coffee for alt-Eve. This Eve takes her coffee with milk, which feels weird.

The outdoor chairs overlook a neat, thriving vegetable garden. There is a chicken coop down at the far end of the yard. Villanelle doesn’t think her Eve would agree to that again.

“The other me, I mean,” alt-Eve continues. “She’ll believe things like this—impossible, conspiracy-theory level shit—but it’s not easy for her to show that belief until she’s convinced herself of the evidence. Then you won’t be able to shake her out of it.”

They chuckle.

“What if it doesn’t work like that?” Villanelle asks. She hates that her voice sounds so small, but she can’t bear to voice the possibility any louder. “What if she’s too different to you, and I’m too different to your wife?”

Eve fiddles absently with her rings, turning them subtly in place where they nestle behind her second knuckle.

“We’re always us,” she says after a minute. “You’re not the first pair of runners to end up here looking for a hiding spot, and I can _assure_ you that we’re still us, even when we’re not.”

“What happened to the other version? Did they stay here?”

Alt-Eve gets a funny look on her face, like the memory is unpleasant.

Villanelle thinks that maybe, just as not all versions of them are as cruel as her and Eve, not all of them are as kind either. Maybe there are versions of them out there even she couldn’t like.

When alt-Eve answers, she simply says, “they had to go; we can’t all stay here at once. I’m afraid sooner or later you two will have to move on as well.”

The guest bed feels smaller the second night they stay in it. Not smaller in a fun ‘ _oh no Eve look how close we will have to sleep to each other_ ’ way. Smaller in a way that makes Villanelle feel like her lungs won’t fully inflate. Smaller in a way that cramps her, unwelcoming.

“They won’t let us stay,” she whispers, not sure whether Eve is even still conscious. The difference in her breathing isn’t that pronounced, between sleeping and drowsy wakefulness. “But I think here is our best chance. At having a life. At lasting longer than a few months with the Twelve after us and nobody left on our side.”

“So we stay despite them?” Eve whispers, still unmoving.

Villanelle looks at the inward curl of Eve’s shoulders as she lies on her side, faced away. She wants to touch her, but she isn’t so sure that now’s the time.

“What if it breaks the universe?”

Eve snorts.

“Seriously—the other Eve said they’d had visitors before but they had to leave. Maybe only one version of a person can exist in a universe without it messing things up?”

“Those two are _painfully_ normal,” says Eve thoughfully, twisting onto her front so that she can prop herself up on her elbows.

Her dark eyes meet Villanelle’s, and Villanelle is struck all over again by how far she would go for this woman. Here they are on another whole version of the Earth and she still hasn’t hit the limit yet. That is love. She knows it now.

“Do you think they could actually stop us?”

On the third night, they stay up playing cards on the dining table until alt-Eve and Oksana have gone to bed. Eve likes a frantic game called spit. Villanelle likes snap, because she has fast reflexes and because sometimes Eve’s hand ends up pressed onto her own.

They give the others enough time to fall asleep before Eve sneaks to the knife block and Villanelle grabs a couch cushion then unplugs the extension cord between the wall and the television.

The plan is for each to take on herself.

“I don’t want to kill you again,” Villanelle had said, and almost cried with relief when Eve nodded and replied in kind.

In truth, she doesn’t want to kill _anybody_ again. At least it will be the easiest crime to cover up, as long as nobody finds their duplicate bodies. The garden, Eve has decided, needs digging out. A fresh application of blood and bone beneath the rose bushes.

When it’s done they’ll opt for a sea-change, or a tree-change, or whatever—they’ll just get out of these careers they can’t maintain, away from any friends who might discover a lack of shared memory.

What is one more murder if it means they can be free together? Villanelle has killed so many more for so much less.

They make their way upstairs: shoes off, breaths silent. The bedroom door is ajar. Villanelle tested the hinges earlier and found them quiet. She steps over the creak she discovered in the floorboards, showing Eve the way.

She thinks, bizarrely, of the late-night movie _Macbeth_ she watched not too long ago. She did not like that story as much as she expected to.

She rounds the bed to the far side, Oksana’s side, letting Eve slip along beside her counterpart. They’ll have to time it well; their advantage is all in the element of surprise.

Villanelle starts in with the cushion, covering Oksana’s face and propping her knee across her other self’s forearms, squashing her down. She struggles right away, neck lifting in protest against the downward pressure and giving Villanelle the space to loop the extension cord around the back of her head. She’s dropping the pillow and pulling, tighter, tighter, watching her own face strain and fill up like a bruise, wondering what kind of perverse pleasure or fear she’s supposed to feel about it when the sound of Eve’s screaming cuts through the fog of the moment. Which Eve, she’s ashamed to admit she can’t tell.

Eve and alt-Eve are off the bed, grappling against the wall. Not much light reaches them through the half-open door, but with what she’s given Villanelle can make out shadowy smears of blood on the paintwork.

_Eve!_ she shouts, and like some kind of cursed mirror they both turn. Alt-Eve looks right into Villanelle’s eyes as she drives the knife—no, a _different_ knife, one of her own—into Eve’s gut. Villanelle feels the fiery punch of blade into flesh as viscerally as she had that day in Paris.

Her grip on Oksana loosens momentarily, and the second-to-last thing she sees is alt-her pulling a hand loose and reaching under the edge of her pillow to retrieve a _gun_.

“How—” she asks uselessly.

“There is only room for one of us,” Oksana explains coolly, handling the weapon like no interior designer Villanelle’s ever dreamed of. “You’ll be moving on now.”


End file.
